The rolling bot is speeding down the course. It comes unstuck on the center line and into the barriers. It’s in trouble!

LG’S ROLLING BOT WILL ENTERTAIN YOU AND YOUR CAT

It was perhaps the most interesting and unusual smartphone accessory at this year’s Mobile World Congress.

LG’s Rolling Bot is a robot controlled via smartphone.

There’s a camera in the body that sends a live video picture to a cell phone. The user controls it from the same room, or from anywhere in the world.

LG says one use is as a home monitoring system. You can trundle the little thing around and check up on the house while you’re, say, showing off smartphones in Barcelona. If anything’s amiss, you can’t do much about except maybe call a friend or the police. The robot isn’t very useful in that instance.

But it can amuse your cat. There’s a laser pointer in the Rolling Bot that might attract your cat’s attention. OK, it will attract your cat’s attention. Have you ever seen a cat and a laser pointer?

Apart from this, there isn’t much too it. Except for the initial wow factor of showing your friends your new robot.

It reminded a little of Q-Taro, a spherical robot prototyped by Sony in 2002. It had lights that glowed according to its surroundings. It never became a commercial product.

As for the Rolling Bot, LG says it is going to be on sale, but the price and launch date haven’t been decided.